“Why, don’t you know,” said he, “that when the jury brought in the verdict they were all so badly frightened that they trembled, and the judge himself, when he pronounced the sentence, shook like a leaf.”
This, he said, looked bad.
“The anarchists had no reason to be afraid, but the judge and the jury had good reason to be afraid.”
“I told him,” said Deputy Hartke, “that I had heard that Fischer had signed a petition to the Governor asking for mercy, and added that I had heard he had done the same thing.”
“That is not true,” he responded. “I said in my letter to the Governor that if one was to be murdered, I was the one. That is the kind of a document I signed.”
“I’ll tell you,” he continued, “in five or six years from now the people will see the error of hanging us, if they do not see it sooner.”
With this Spies, who had been lying on his back with his hands above his head, removed them and turned on his side with his face to the wall.
The anarchist editor then lay down on the bed, and with his white face upturned, talked continuously with Deputy Hartke about mutual acquaintances and things and events of days gone by. He never referred to to-morrow, and seemed desiriousdesirous of keeping the thoughts of his approaching execution as far as possible from his mind.
Engel grew a little more serious as the night wore on, and when he came to be more familiar with the death watch (Deputies Bombgarten and Hastige) he talked with them about the cause for which he was about to die. He protested his innocence over and over again, and told the story of the Haymarket riot, and all he knew of it.